Salmon Festival

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Salmon Festival with our friends, Katie and Joe. This has been something that Hyatt has looked forward to since we moved here and he heard that there was an opportunity to catch a salmon with your bare hands. We had perfect weather for it and thoroughly enjoyed our time, although the actual catching of the salmon ended up being a little more tricky than anticipated. Joe, however, somehow managed to catch two - the second one with just one hand while already holding his first one in his other hand! Hyatt says that next time he would use gloves rather than trying to do the barehanded thing, as they were more slippery than he bargained for. It's hard to capture the time in a blog entry, but let's just say that Joe had Hyatt hold his second fish for him, and the fish got away from him... and Hyatt ended up getting a fish at the very end.... one that looked kind of dead and was sort of floating in the corner. I think it was a real prize fish, though, because this was one that escaped ALL of the other people that had been in there, and maybe he was just floating a little because he was plain tuckered out after dodging the crowds.

Of course, this festival had its fun quirky things, too, as you'll see in the pictures below - our favourites being the man dressed in the salmon costume - without any pants on, and the men's outhouses that don't have full doors:)

5 Years

This weekend, Hyatt and I had the most glorious time celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary. The anniversary itself was actually Nov.1st, but it worked better for us to go away this weekend, so we just went out for dinner on our actual day. Anyways, our wonderful friends, the Driskell's, had Kaiya stay overnight with them while Hyatt and I went to the Oirase Gorge and stayed at the Oirase Keiryu Grand Hotel. We arrived there to check in at 3pm on Saturday and got to see our "Japanese style" room. It was perfect - we had a view of the gorge, along with the beautiful autumn leaves (those that were still left on the trees), and tatami mats on the floor (no bed in sight, but I had been given a heads up about that, so it wasn't a surprise). Once we dropped off our stuff, we went back down to the lobby area to sit near the fireplace with the amazing view and enjoyed a decadent 700Y hot cocoa (really was hot cocoa, not hot chocolate, so wasn't quite the sweet taste we were anticipating), and 500Y little piece of cheesecake. It was a moment in time to be savoured:) Once we were ready to get out, we opted for a drive rather than a walk, because it was freezing cold. We drove up the 103 and then veered off on a mountain road to explore and saw some breathtaking scenery as the sun was getting lower in the sky.

Once we returned (via a different route than we had come) to the hotel, we headed to dinner, which was a Japanese buffet. Hyatt loved it, as there were all kinds of new foods to try, and I loved just getting to experience something different. They did have some incredible ice cream, though, as well as an apple pastry that, in my opinion, made the whole trip worth while. It was interesting, too, to see all the people who came to dinner in their onsen outfits (not the outfits that they actually wear in the onsen - which would mean that they wouldn't be wearing a whole lot of anything, but, rather, the outfits that they wear to walk to and from the onsen). By the way, this was an onsen hotel. Who knew?

We had a nice relaxing evening, and fairies had come to visit our room while we were at dinner and made up our beds, which consisted of futon mats and duvets. Let's just say that we loved the beds so much that we were missing them last night when we had to sleep in a "normal" one last night. And we're going to get some tatami mats for our house because we were so loving the feel of them on our feet - maybe we'll put some in Kaiya's new room instead of putting a rug in there.

In the morning, we had our buffet breakfast, which was also very nice - a combination of Japanese and more "American" food (they had biscuits and eggs). We followed this by a walk to a bridge that they had in their brochure, then some onsen time (my very first experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed it), and then we checked out. (For those of you who don't know, an onsen is a Japanese public bath.)

All in all, we had a great 5th anniversary! Here are some pictures... (there are also a couple of pictures from the Harvest Festival last week)...